UW-Green Bay

Month: November 2008

“Literature, the Humanities, and the University:
Three Democratic Institutions”

Bryan Vescio
Professor of Humanistic Studies and English

Friday, 21 November 2008
2:30-3:330
1965 Room

Professor Vescio will present his “pragmatist” theory of literature and attempt to change the way we conceive of literature in such a way as to make it serve a modern, democratic society rather than older forms of social organization. What is “literature”? What makes literature distinctive within the humanities? Where is literature situated in humanistic studies and the university? For answers to these questions, be sure to attend the next Faculty Forum!

The Green Bay Film Society will present the next International Film of the semester on Wednesday, November 19th at 7:00 pm in the auditorium of the Neville Public Museum.

American Carnival
American, 2007

This film is a documentary on the lives of carnival performers (“carnies”) and the roads they travel through small-town Wisconsin. Director Laura Stewart preserves the carnie lifestyle in this funny and sensitive work, while the carnies themselves dispel many of the myths associated with carnivals since the 1940s and 1950s.

Laura Stewart will be at the showing to intriduce and discuss her work.

Tim Mooney will perform his one man show “Moliere Than Thou” on December 2, 2008 at 7 p.m. in the University Theatre on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus. The show is in English and features this internationally performed and acclaimed comic rendition of Moliere’s comedies.

This show is sponsored by Cercle francais (French Club) and Humanistic Studies, both of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Free admission to University of Wisconsin-Green Bay students with ID, $2 for all others.

In 1933, Nazi students orchestrated the burning of thousands of “un-German” books in staged spectacles across Germany, targeting authors from Helen Keller and Ernest Hemingway to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. These first steps that the Nazis took to suppress freedom of expression, and the response that occurred in the United States, are examined in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibition, Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings, scheduled to appear at the Neville Public Museum of Brown County.

Fightingthe Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings, debuted at the Holocaust Memorial Museum several years ago and is now traveling nationwide, focuses on how the book burnings became a potent symbol during World War II in America’s battle against Nazism and concludes by examining their continued impact on American politics, literature and popular culture. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to view displays of period artifacts, documents and news coverage, along with film, video, and newsreel footage. The exhibition features clips from movies such as “Pleasantville” and “Field of Dreams,” episodes of “The Waltons” and “M*A*S*H” and photos of the public burning of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.

Professor Kevin Kain will lead a discussion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day on the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Solzhenitsyn’s novel depicts a typical day in a soviet gulag, one of Stalin’s labor camps, where Solzhenitsyn himself had served for eight years. Having escaped a Nazi Prisoner of War camp, Ivan Denisovich Shukov, returns to Russia only to be delcared a spy and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. The book explores the oppression and dehumanization of Soviet labor camps and the means by which one survives such an ordeal.

The discussions are free and open to the public. Faculty, students, and community members are encouraged to attend. Of course, we encourage you to read the “great book” before attending the discussion, but even if you cannot finish the work, you may find the session enlightening.

The Green Bay Film Society will present the next International Film of the semester on Wednesday, November 5th at 7:00 pm in the auditorium of the Neville Public Museum.

Kept and Dreamless
Argentina, 2005

During Argentina’s economic crisis of the 90’s, nine year-old Eugenia and her mother, Florencia, live a seemingly colorful life surrounded by eclectic neighbors and an offbeat collection of family. But for Eugenia, who must deal with her mother’s dysfunctional and drug-addled lifestyle, life is anything but pleasant in this darkly inspiring story of expectation, acceptance and nontraditional family, led by standout performances from director Vera Fogwill and young actress Lucia Snieg.